Sunday, 21 March 2010

Herd Immunity Myth (cont)

My labelling of the “herd immunity” from vaccination concept as a MYTH has been noticed by the opposition. A blogger has written in asserting

“The concept of herd immunity makes perfect sense. If enough people get vaccinated in a community, the less chance the virus spreads to those who are not immunized.

There is also the benefit that higher rates of immunization mean less chance that the virus will mutate.”

This perfectly illustrates the mentality of the “denialists”, the give-a-vaccine-for-everything brigade. Even where they have had their noses rubbed in the facts (vaccinated communities can still contract the disease - see my last post), they continue on auto assertion mode. In fact in relation, for example, to measles according to the World Health Organisation the odds are about 15 times greater that measles will strike those vaccinated against the disease than those who are left alone [1].

It’s for this reason that I heavily moderate comments to my blog because I didn’t start it to give the oxygen of publicity to those who will argue black is white till the cows come home, regardless of the counter-evidence given them, or who just want to propagate pernicious views that, for example, the health of the nation is dependent on everyone being forcefed, or injected, with xyz vaccine or that all drinking water should be fluoridated “for your own good” (as if they knew!). Many of them clearly delight in wasting the good guys’ (holistic therapists) time requesting “explanations” though they are not interested in the answer, and they seem to come in one of two categories: either “useful idiots” doing Big Pharma’s job for them, or criminals (in my book) who are intentionally spreading misinformation, and maybe getting paid for it.

As for the second assertion, “higher rates of immunization mean less chance that the virus will mutate”, that is not, I’m afraid, true. It is known now that when vaccines attack only some strains of a disease, other strains gain prominence. The disease becomes more virulent and people who are not normally susceptible to the ailment are infected. Thus a pneumococcal vaccine designed to protect against several strains of the disease has resulted in more dangerous non-vaccine strains of pneumococcal disease replacing strains targeted by the vaccine. Over-use of any vaccine, or drug as even lay people are aware in the case of antibiotics, tends to have a significant and unforeseen downside.

Finally, let’s remind ourselves again

1. no vaccination ever achieves immunisation, by which I mean 100% protection, forever. Instead, it may result in an unknown level of what we might call semi-protection ranging from 0% to, maybe, 50 % (there’s no way of measuring the latter figure) for just a limited time [2]. 2. Whatever limited semi-protection the vaccine may give against a particular virus strain you may never even meet in the rest of your life has to be weighed against the potential for possibly severe adverse effects which may appear many years down the road in a compromised immune system. Your vaccine virus will have been incubated in an “unnatural” medium, often a chicken’s embryo (which itself can never be guaranteed sterile), then supposedly inactivated (100%? You can never be sure [3]) with a poison, formaldehyde, then preserved with Thimerosal, a derivative of mercury (a neurological toxin), and finally has further poisons or “nasties” added – possibly polyethylene glycol, polysorbate 80, hydrocortisone, neomycin, polymyxin (antibiotics), etc. If millions of such artificially doctored pathogens, which may or may not be totally inactive, are produced and shot into people, you are going by that very process to increase significantly the risk of creating additional mutations which would never have occurred in nature.

The much safer alternative is to work on boosting your immune system by natural means and not run risks you don’t have to. Google Vitamin D and C especially, which have a very important role to play here. And homeopathic remedies taken as prophylactics will probably give you as good a level of protection as you should need without risking filling your body up with poisons.

[1] Vaccine Safety Manual, Neil Miller p.120[2] Between 0- 5 years possibly, which depends on the vaccine and the reaction of the particular patient: sometimes antibodies produced in response to the vaccination disappear very rapidly from the body. The pharmaceutical companies' only answer to this is to repeat the vaccination ie “booster” jabs. [3] See, for example, Jonas Salk’s supposedly “inactivated” polio vaccine which was actually quite virulent. It paralysed and killed many children. Many viruses are incubated in mediums eg monkey parts which already have other infectious agents in them which simply cannot all be detected by currently available scientific methods.

About Me

I am pro choice, free speech, and the right to require full information in all matters to do with personal health. Our government should be made to pass laws - regardless of what the EU may dictate - to protect every citizen's right to obtain without restriction the natural herbs, homeopathics and supplements,and to consult the natural health practitioners, they may desire.